not a bug - suggestion rather - spamblock

[costa]

i have some reports from my blog visitors that captcha produced by spamblock plugin is unreadable or sometimes produces strings veeeery difficult to read. mostly users with lcd panels have me this problem reported. maybe a little darker colours would help? is there a possibility to do it on my own? i'm lame with php coding so...

i also suggest a little different method for string generation (maybe as an alternative?). i've seen this on some pages and i liked it a lot. it works somehow like that: the user is asked to give an answer for a simple mathematics equation, lets say: 3+2 = ?... i think it's not a very hard to implement and it looks just elegant when styled.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

The problem with the mathematical strings is, that it is much easier for bots to crack.

About the captcha images: If you're using GD, you can affect the generated colors via PHP code, maybe you want to try a bit. It currently uses this:

Code: Select all

$color = imagecolorallocate($image, mt_rand(50, 235), mt_rand(50, 235), mt_rand(50,235));

Actually having a low contrast is what makes captchas hard to interpret for bots. Since some captchas like the ones from phpbb are already broken, it's actually better to have captchas that are hard to read )

Best regards,
Garvin

[costa]

garv, my hero!

works like a charm now. i also changed font for somehow more clearer and sharper and played a little with colours. after some testing made locally i submitted the chnages to server. now i'm waiting for my readers feedback.

thanks garvin! also thanks for so quick response.

btw - if i'll find some time in upcoming days i'll finish full polish translation of the basic instalation of serendipity. so you'll have almost full polish translation ready for 1.0 version. damn, i did not expected there is so much to translate... interface, common plugins, errors... you guys wrote a lot of text to serendipity . my goal is to translate all of serendipity's plugins as well so if there is something i should carry about - what is it?

[garvinhicking]

Hi costa!

Glad that helped. I'd be pretty interested in how the changes you made are affecting spam and your visitors!

Of course a polish translation would be excellent. Apart from the plugin and core language files there's nothing really to translated. Think that is enough, also )

Best regards,
Garvin

[costa]

you wanted to know so here we go.

well, readers of my blog sayed that it is much, much easier now to see what exactly stands for the code. so basically the change was a good idea. but you were right - i had (very few but i had them) some spam comments that managed to break the code. but scrambled captchas did a good work and now for some days i'm a happy person without spam messages

so the solution might be simple and usable for other serendipity users: just to take a clear font (like let's say andale mono), some darker colours and enabling scrambled captchas. for me it is working just well and i hear no more complains.